The Fight
by SAL-Chan
Summary: Something’s changed with that fight - it's shifted something. Made something perfectly clear and opaque at the same time. It makes Cloud feel uneasy. He can't explain it, but he can feel it. Breathe it.
1. That Monstrous Thing

* * *

Title: The Fight (1/??)  
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII  
Paring: Tifa/Cloud, Denzel/Marlene  
Word Count: 2, 586  
Summary: This fight, it seems, changes everything in all of their relationships.

* * *

- - -

There's a freckle - a single angel kiss - sits at the corner of Tifa's mouth. It's something Cloud never notices normally - only when she yells at him.

"I can't fucking believe you!"

Cloud keeps his eyes on the clock. He keeps his mouth straight - his eyes clear - and doesn't respond. Tifa slams the bowl of pasta on the table. Marlene and Denzel jump, but both of them keep their heads down. Cloud takes a moment to wonder at the traits the two of them chose to take from him.

Tifa's eyes are on fire. Her hands are on her hips - the classic 'Angry Tifa' pose.

"He's fifteen, Cloud. Fifteen! He should not be on your bike by himself. He's not old enough to be able to control that...that monstrous thing!"

Cloud waits for that pause that let him know he can speak. "Tifa-"

"No!" Her eyebrows shoot to her hair line. _Bad timing, Cloud_. Tifa sits with a thump and serves Marlene a lump of pasta, then Denzel, then herself. She throws the spoons back into the bowl and crosses her arms - her eyes still on him. Nobody at the table moves for utensils. "Cloud, I don't want to hear anything you have to say. I don't want to know about it."

Tifa turns her angry eyes to Denzel, but her mouth stays set. Her gaze moves to Marlene as well - her eyes angry and scrutinizing.

"I'm ashamed of both of you for this."

Denzel doesn't move. Marlene's head pops up - her eyes suddenly defensive. "I didn't do anything!-"

"You -" Tifa turns, her eyes thinning, "didn't stop him. Marlene, I would have thought, out of both of you, that the common sense of not doing something as stupid and reckless as letting Denzel get on that bike - "

"Tifa." Denzel's tone bites. He sounds like Cloud. There is anger in his eyes now. "It's not Marlene's fault! She-"

"She let you do it." Tifa shoots back. Cloud hasn't seen her this angry in a long time. "That's reason enough to put you both at fault."

"_Tifa_," Cloud starts, setting his eyes on that beauty mark at the side of her mouth.

"You're grounded." Tifa says loudly - filling the entire kitchen with the noise. Her words are final and chilling - and the look on both Marlene and Denzel's faces are shocked and appalled. Cloud wonders if he ever had to worry about anything as horrible as being grounded. He can't remember.

Tifa's angry eyes turned to him next. She waits - waits for him to make his move. Cloud swallows, takes a deep breath, and stands slowly.

"Excuse me." He says, his tone a lot more clipped than he thought it would be - hell, when did he get this angry? He hadn't felt it building. It just sort of fell out of his stomach and made his face hot.

Cloud turns on his heel, pushed his chair in calmly, and walks out of the kitchen. He has come to realize that fighting with Tifa never turns out well, and it always leaves him on the couch - or worse yet, out at Barret's or Cid's. He hates fighting with Tifa, and he hates that he can get so mad over something that will be forgotten in a week or so.

Their fights often ended with him walking out.

* * *

- - -

Cloud works on the bike the rest of the day. He heads up to the loft after the bar has been closed for a few hours and finds their bedroom door closed to him.

Cloud sleeps on the couch.

He wakes up early the next morning, starts the coffee pot, and is outside getting ready to leave when he encounters another one of his housemates.

Denzel chucks a rock at him.

Cloud backhands the rock and turns in one smooth motion.

"Where are you going?" Denzel's voice is quiet. The just-morning light gives his face odd shadows.

"Cid's."

A look comes over Denzel's face - one that makes Cloud hate himself - one that twists the younger man's features into something horrifically like his own. It makes Cloud grit his teeth - makes the blonde drop his helmet - makes him move past the younger boy into the bar. Denzel stays at the doorway for another moment.

They set the bar up together in silence.

It's already getting hot outside.

* * *

- - -

There's a scar on Cloud's shoulder - one Tifa never really noticed before. She _had_, yes - countless times - but she _hadn't_. It dances in the light, tight and pinching - old.

Cloud has a tank top on - Tifa cut the sleeves off of one of his other shirts. It's too hot for him to be wearing his thick cloth shirts. Not that Cloud would have said anything about the heat. Tifa caught him on the verge of passing out the other day - the stupid boy doesn't pay enough attention to himself.

So Tifa cut the sleeves off of one of his other shirts - an older shirt that he used to wear while he worked on his bike, one he wouldn't miss as much. One she said she hated but loved the feel and smell of - and she makes sure that she left the damned thing out for him the next day. On the floor, in front of the door.

The temperature outside is stifling - and even with the fans going full blast the inside of the bar was an oven. Tifa's shorts are sticking to the backs of her legs, and she is sure her entire back is soaked with sweat.

Cloud - along with Denzel, who feels the need to prove himself to Cloud even though this grounding is clearly Cloud's fault - are outside, unloading cases of alcohol and bringing them into the basement. Heavy labor, in the heat that could cook a chocobos egg on the pavement, the two freaks are lugging boxes up a set of steep stairs.

Idiots. The pair of them!

Marlene has draped herself over the bar top - the girl's shirt is tied up with a hair tie and soaked clean through. Tifa lets her wear bathing suit bottoms - 'If you can where your bathing suit top,' Marlene protested, 'then I can wear mine too!' - and makes sure that she remembers to push a cup of water over toward the young girl every once in awhile. Marlene's shirt is white and see-through - and Tifa is almost sure that she's asleep now. Finally.

Tifa pushes her bangs from her face and checks the clock. Another hour until noon. How could it possibly be this hot?

There were two other patrons in the bar - a pair of old men that drank on occasion and played chess near the window. Tifa fills up two pitchers and moves outside.

Cloud's skin shines with sweat, his hair almost pure gold in the light. Tifa's footsteps almost falter - her equilibrium suddenly thrown. Cloud's shoulder twitch slightly - he hears her. He kept his back to her and continues loading the bottles of ale into a crate. Tifa wrinkles her nose - he's _ignoring_ her.

Tifa rolls her hips, lets out a breath, and throws one pitcher at his back.

Tifa would have never guessed that Cloud scream like a girl when hit with cold water.

* * *

- - -

"Well," Yuffie says, sitting on top of the bar, "this is certainly a change. For a whole day?"

"Not a word." Tifa says. The bar is full of smoke, and Cid is laughing at something that Cloud said. The blond has a slightly please half-smile on his face. Tifa feels her face flush, just a little, before Yuffie says anything.

"Either of them?"

"None. Not since yesterday."

"Denzel I can understand." Yuffie downs a swig of beer - and shoves the empty thing toward Tifa. The ninja has even less clothing on - if you could call a thin peace of terry cloth clothing - that Tifa though she would ever have walked around in. Yuffie wipes her nose and leans forward on her elbows. "But Cloud normally acts like nothing happened. Or he goes out to Cid's. Not a word?"

"He hasn't said anything to anyone." Marlene adds. The younger girl keeps her eyes on the bar top. She snatches the empty bottle from Tifa's hand and slips it into it's proper place. She then set about opening another one. Yuffie and Tifa share a look - Yuffie has a smile on.

"Is he on the couch tonight?" The ninja asks.

"If he wants' to keep his eyes where they belong."

"I'm sorry Tifa." Marlene says softly, placing the beer on the counter, than turns on her bare heal and leaves the area behind the bar. Marlene makes a sweep over to where the group of men are sitting and smiles at Barret. She kisses him on the cheek - an action that makes him laugh - and continues her way up the stairs. Cid and Cloud watch - Tifa notices the pure look on Cloud's face. His eyes follow Marelen's movements, her essence - affectionate and hopeless. Tifa watches Marelen's escape silently, Clouds face quietly, something in her chest aching to comfort the child - but to comfort the man more. She understands. But boiled anger keeps her words stuffed in her throat. Yuffie takes a sip of her new beer and _humms_.

"You really that angry?"

"You think She would be this angry?"

Yuffie pauses, lips around the opening of her new beer. She blows softly across the top and stares at the groves in the wood. Tifa watches Cloud from across the bar - the way his eyes seamen almost grey in the lighting, glowing faintly. Barret is saying something softly to his blond friend, to which Cloud merely nods and turns away. She watches as Cid and Barret give looks to each other, much like the look that she and Yuffie shared moments before. Yuffie sucks in a deep breath, letting her eyes close.

"For a little, maybe." The dark haired girl answers truthfully. "But if She was here, I don't think-"

"-_there Yuffie_?" Vincent's voice softly crackles from the radio on the ninja's hip. Both of the girls jump, and Yuffie practically vaults off her seat and is out the door to answer his call. Leaving Tifa to stare at the man she loves and hates at the same time, alone.

* * *

- - -

Tifa sighs when she sleeps - a soft noise of comfort and contentment.

He kind of misses that sound. Even after two nights apart, the sound that seems so soft and insignificant is suddenly something he finds himself longing for.

After a night? God, he's pathetic.

The next day, it's hotter.

The heat wakes Cloud at four, a baking feeling. He's stuck to the couch fabric - the tight air of the upstairs apartment is suffocating. Their - Tifa's bedroom is closed, keeping any cold air the fan in there gives off to room itself.

An early start. Good thing - he isn't sleeping well anyway. He hasn't been.

Something swirls in the center of his chest, glowing and resentful, telling him what he doesn't want to hear.

Denzel wanders down at 6 in little more than a pair of shorts, and together they set the bar up early. Denzel busies himself washing cups while Cloud mops the floor. It seems, in this space of bottled words and tangible anger, they managed to get more done then they ever had before. Cloud can't remember the last time that he mopped the floor. Since when did Denzel wash the dishes without complaining?

Denzel is more grown up then Cloud gives him credit for. The boy's shoulders and chest swell with his age, his nose just to Clouds chin. There are dotted stars and rough patches on his hands - working nicks as proof that Denzel is trying. Still trying. Sometimes, Cloud forgets that Denzel lived through a difficult childhood - that his teenage years like theses, with the awkward growing and the gaining of knowledge - are horrible in ways that Cloud cannot for the life of him remember. Cloud notes how different and similar they are in a nanosecond and is amazed that this thought even crossed his mind. It would have never surfaced if...

Something's _changed_.

Something's changed with that fight - something between him and Tifa and the kids - it's shifted something. Made something perfectly clear and opaque at the same time. It makes Cloud feel uneasy, this change is something drastic. He can't explain it, but he can feel it. Breathe it.

Tifa slipped down at seven - Cloud is already out working on his bike. Denzel sweeps out of the room as she steps on the ground floor - the motion not escaping her eyes. Cloud isn't sure what Denzel does after they set up the bar - but Cloud normally doesn't see anyone all day.

By noon, there are dots dancing at the corner of Clouds left eye. The scar over his eyebrow is throbbing, and the joints in his arms are aching. He smiles and thinks _I'm getting old_, then remembers exactly how old he is and his smile falls off his face.

"Cloud!" Marlene says, an entire pitcher of water in her hands. The girl is a godsend - and the smile on her petite face lets Cloud know she knows it. Marlene makes him sit in the shade of the garage and makes sure that he drinks the entire pitcher.

"Your getting sunburn on your shoulders."

Her small fingers are cold against his hot skin. Cloud hasn't realized the cherry color he's turning. Marlene leans her head against his arm and humms. Outside the bar, the ground is a dirty color - a sand speckled with grease and foreign dirt. The bar faces outwards - away from the inner city - giving the edge of Midgar a little liquor tinted color. The blinding glare of a yellow seven on the roof is dazzling in the light.

Marlene has grown up. With another four years under her belt, the little girl has become a young lady - a, God help them, teenager. Her hair is long and dances in the wind. Her arms and legs are growing, eyes still child light. She's careful where she should be now, sensing things that women normally sense, understand without being told. Marlene isn't _his_ either - Cloud wonders, for the second time in two days, where the hell these thoughts are all coming from.

Something _changed_. It growls low in his stomach and makes his heart ache.

"Are you going to leave again?"

Cloud feels something catch in his chest. "No."

"Promises me that." She says softly. Cloud's chest is slick, and Marlene tugs on his pants. Carefully - a simple shuffle across his hip. "Please."

"Cross my heart." He says, and means it. Cloud would give his life to her. He feels he owes it to her.

Perhaps that's where this sudden, uncomfortable feeling has come from. Maybe that is why he's mad. He has never been mad before - not at Tifa, or at any of them. Marlene tucks her face into the bend of his arm and holds him. She smells like clovers and their shampoo. He is sure, for a minute, that she's crying.

The water is cool on his arm.


	2. Reckless

Title: The Fight (2/??)

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Paring: Tifa/Cloud, Denzel/Marlene

Word Count: 2, 450 (5,008 in total)

Summary: This fight, it seems, changes everything in all of their relationships.

* * *

- - -

Sometimes, when he isn't aware of it, Cloud humms to himself. While working, his mind busy, and the small noise leaks from his throat - thick in sound and in feeling. It was something Zach did - the same, soft song - light and airy.

But it's his now, not Zach's. Clouds' made it his through time and use – and it's beautiful.

Yuffie and - a big surprise - Vincent show up when the sun goes down that day. The stoic man slips off toward the backyard - to brood and drown in calm silence like Cloud, Tifa guesses. Yuffie helps her behind the bar. The night is cold, actually - a brisk, sharp change in temperature. The bar is flooded. Tifa takes all the help she can get.

Tifa makes sure that Yuffie is between her and Marlene the entire time. Strangely, the younger girl is acting like nothing happened between them. It reminds her of Cloud. It makes staying mad at the girl a lot harder.

Maybe it is her? Maybe _she_ had been-

"Tifa, sweetheart-" Cid sits, cigarette ashes falling onto the bar top. "Your making yourself too easy to read."

"Shut up." Tifa sets a beer on the counter for him and turns back to the liquor shelves.

"If ya'r so upset, then talk ta him."

Tifa rolls her hips and pores two shots. "Cid, I swear-"

"The kid's gonna work himself sick."

Tifa slides the shot glasses down the bar - where they're picked up immediately. "And?"

"Tifa-"

"Cid, I'm not in the mood to fight with you." She leans forward, crossing her arms to lean on the bar. "I'm fighting with enough men in my life right now – I don't want to fight with any more."

"He's right." Marlene says. The girl is elbow deep in the ice cooler, scooping out more into a pitcher. She fills it like she knows what she's doing and she has done it for a while. Her white lace shirt seems dainty in comparison to Tifa's black leather. Her hair is pulled up high like Tifa's. Marlene can easily reach over the bar top now, sliding a cup of rum and coke to a patron - Tifa wonders when the girl has grown so much. "Cloud's going to collapse."

There is a collective shout as Denzel moves through the front door with a full case of beer. Tifa lets her eyes follow him, Marlene's presence careful next to her.

"I'm not ready to not be mad yet." Tifa said. Cid shakes his head and lights another cigarettes as he slides away to help the gangly teen get the cases over the counter. There are itchy, hot hands already reaching for the drinks, but Cid's rough mouth shoos them away. Marlene is there to help Denzel - and, surprisingly, Tifa sees something shimmer around them. A tension - a careful caution - that surprises her. Marlene is careful not to touch him, and Denzel tries his hardest to avoid her eyes.

That isn't _right_...

"Well, I hope you're ready soon." Yuffie notes, mixing something orange colored. "The sooner you and Short, Blonde, and Stoic make up, the sooner the two of them can relax around each other again."

* * *

- - -

Tifa has a scar at the base of her neck. Cloud knows where she got it from - it's a burn from a fire long ago. Cloud doesn't really remember the fire - bits and pieces - he had come around near the end.

He doesn't want to think about it.

Cloud ends up sleeping on the floor of the loft. The air up there is cooler then it is on the couch downstairs. The floor was alright, but his back strains and his neck aches. He can't do this that much longer. He has to apologize so he can sleep in his bed again.

But he doesn't want to apologize. It doesn't feel right to-

Denzel doesn't wake to help that morning. Cloud finds it strangely comfortable all alone - being by himself in a place he calls home, knowing that there are others above him that...

Cloud sighs and opens the last of the windows. Vincent is sitting on his own bike outside - alarming Cloud so much that he stumbles on his way out the front door.

"What's wrong?"

Vincent's eyebrows jump, just a little. "What makes you think something is wrong?"

Cloud feels dust gritty in his mouth. "_It's five in the_ _morning_."

The black haired man stares, then he sighs just a little. "I need a favor..."

* * *

- - -

Tifa finds herself dreaming of Cloud - him and Zach when - when they were in the old Midgar. Before the fire and destruction. She dreams that she knew what she knows now - and she won't let Zach go. Cloud smiles at her, open and bright, and says everything is alright. Nothing will ever change.

Tifa wakes to Marlene crying.

The girl is sitting where Cloud normally sleeps, her awkwardly long legs curled up and her head buried in her knees. Tifa sits up instantly and reaches for her. "Marlene - what?--"

"Cloud's gone." The girl says softly, moving away from the hand. Tifa stops and lets her hand fall, her chest becoming cold.

"What?"

"Cloud left." The shuttering figure repeats, her face soaked. Her eyes look sadder then Tifa thought they ever could. A thousand times sadder then when Barret has to leave. Tifa wonders at that for a second.

"You sure?"

"His bike is gone." She says. "His shoes and jacket - his overnight pack. He left us again..."

Tifa gets out of bed to see for herself.

Sure enough, his pack is gone from under the sink and his riding jacket is missing from the closet. The garage is empty - an oil spot where Cloud's mechanical beast had been sitting for the past four days the only proof to show that it had sat there at all. Tifa lets her hands skim over the work bench as she takes an in-depth look around. He really can't be gone again, right?

She's biting her lip when she finds it.

The single silver wolf earring sitting on the bench.

No note, no knock on her door and a whispered _'I'll be back'_, but this little silver trinket lets Tifa know that everything will be fine. Cloud would be back before the hole in his ear closed up. He didn't need to say anything for her to understand that. She doesn't need to be afraid this time.

And, perhaps, this time apart will let her forgive him completely.

Tifa goes back inside and holds Marlene until the girl stops crying, murmuring small, careful sounds to get the tears to stop. All the while, she holds the sterling silver earring in the palm of her hand - against the crying girls shoulder - and rubs the cold wolf until her hand starts sweating.

She decides she'll only be mad for a few more days when he comes back. Just so he doesn't think he has gotten away with it.

* * *

- - -

Whenever Cloud hurts himself, he always thinks of Her. Of Her warm hands and kind face.

She would be twenty-six now.

It was odd for him, this time - because he didn't think of Her at all. He only thought _Tifa will be _pissed_ at me for this_.

They had been gone a week. He called the bar, twice - but no one picked up the phone. Denzel answered his cell phone though - so at lease someone in the house knew that he would be coming back there. Though, he had a feeling they didn't expect him like _this_.

The leather across Vincent's shoulders is sticky in the heat. They have been driving for almost two days straight since the attack. Cloud could kick himself for being so careless - if he could ever move his leg again. His arm and shoulder ached where his skin had been hacked open. The ache had become so bad that a numb feeling has swept in to replace the pain. When was the last time he had gotten hurt this bad? He almost forgot this feeling.

"You awake?" Vincent's voice rumbles from under the leather. They're getting closer to Midgar - huge hills in the distant comfortable to Clouds eyes.

"Mostly."

It's more of a noise then a word. Cloud could have _sworn_ that he _said_ that.

Vincent grunts - and that's enough. Cloud holds on to conciseness.

* * *

- - -

Clouds skin is normally a deep tan color from spending the past two years working outside. His body is still in perfect condition, tight and lethal - Tifa says it's cheating, him being a ex-SOLDURE and all. Clouds eyes always light up just a little more when she says that, twinkling - remembering things, people, places - and smiling never the less. The scars that dot his body are few and scattered, rough and huge in ways that make up for the lack of his internal scars showing on his skin. There's a gaping scar at the center of his back, one just set into his right armpit, assorted cuts and burses over his calf's and thighs, a single scar over his left eye. Tifa has seen them in abundance - more times the she has fingers to count. But still, ever time the smooth landscape of Cloud's body is reviled to her eyes, she finds the scars both intimidating and harsh against his otherwise perfect flesh.

Now, Cloud's skin is porcelain white, sticky to the touch and warm all over. He's china fragile in a way she's not used to - as if to touch him will help the fever along. His shoulders are scraped ragged. Tifa has to remove herself from the fact that it's Cloud and has to start doing something.

Starting at his right deltoid, a slash tears across his bicep brachii and nicks the upper part of his brachialius. A rip from his right shoulder to his inner elbow. Easy to stitch, easy to heal, may leave a light scar. Assorted abrasions on his upper vastus muscles, possible tear in his vastur lateralis. Some deep cuts on his upper thigh and assorted areas toward his knee, a cut long enough on the side of his leg to draw attention to after his arm. Something gleams white in the mass of the cuts on Clouds leg. Tifa ignores it.

Cloud is never the one to get hurt. At least not this bad.

Marlene shakes her hands off and rubs her knuckles against the fabric near Clouds chest. Her face is hard and her hands are clean, hair pulled up high on her head. She carefully starts some place small - the few assorted nicks on Clouds upper left pectorals, small scrapes for a sword close enough to cut but not close _enough_ to do damage. Her hands glow an earthy blue - Clouds cuts stitch themselves up, easily.

Clouds breathing is ragged. Tense. Tifa concentrates on realigning the muscle tissue in his upper arm. Someone wipes the sweat from her brow, but she's too busy to notices if it's Yuffie or Marlene or Denzel, but whoever it is she's thankful to them. Vincent is concentrating on Clouds only reviled leg - having cut one of his pant legs at just below the hip - one of Yuffie's materia in hand. Tifa notes the thin fingers that smooth the hair from Clouds face and places a wet cloth on his head. Yuffie's got her phone pressed between her shoulder and her cheek - calling Barret, or Cid, or both - checking the state of the blonde's pupils.

There are two bright spots of color on the rough curves of Clouds cheeks.

Tifa feels like throwing up.

Focus.

Pull the blood back into the almost-dead area, repair any minor lacerations resulting from the initial damage, hug the two lips of the cut tight together, seal as one, fix the assorted other collateral damage around the area. Get as far as she can before her hands give out and she can't pull anything else from herself. Marlene's hands move over a bad cut that heals up instantly once her hands pass over it.

Vincent's shoulder tense and Cloud's face twists into a pained expression. Vincent's shoulders jump and Cloud groans. There's a sickening crack that shakes Tifa's bones.

He was _reckless_.

Tifa knows this. She knows that he was reckless because he's tired; he hurts from sleeping on the couch and the floor and from pushing himself working in the heat. She knows that he's been thinking about the fight none stop since it happened; wearing on him a little more each day he was away. Tifa knows that Cloud thinks that _she_ thought he wasn't coming back. She knows he felt like he was abandoning them even after deciding to help Vincent or whatever.

Tifa _knows_.

She wants him to open his eyes.

Yuffie's hand wraps around hers, breaking her from her thoughts. Cloud's skin has barley started to close up, but he's bleeding again - which is both good and bad. Someone grabs her from behind and pulls her away from him, to sit in a chair near the door - placing water in one of her hands. Denzel's eyes are suddenly close, and he's saying something - she knows it - but all Tifa can register is the careful way Yuffie stitches up Clouds' arm. All she can hear is the unsteady pull of breath as Cloud drags air into his lungs, fighting again the pain. She wishes they had something to give him for it, but she knows almost immodestly upon having that thought that Cloud would be angry if they drugged him and he didn't know. Cloud would rather be stiff and in pain then be inebriated in any way.

She wants him to open his eyes and smile at her. She doesn't want to be angry any more.

She wants to strip him of his scars. She wants' him to stop hurting himself for reasons that he can't control. She wants' him to lie still so she can hold him and never let him go.

She wants him to be _happy_.

It dawns on her, suddenly. The drawing realization makes her shutter with the utter feeling of it.

Surprisingly, despite the amount of time they have spent together - being a couple in almost all the ways possible - she has never told him that she loves him.


End file.
